I sat in on the UMass Gridiron Club's Zoom meeting yesterday. My voice recorder went missing, so I took some notes about Coach Bell's comments. He was rattling stuff off pretty fast, so my recollections may (and probably do) have some errors. Don't get overly excited about any of this.
1. Bell said there will be streaming video of the UMass games. I assume he meant this would be if there was no commercial media coverage.
2. Bell said the UMass team had collectively gained 690 pounds and mentioned Bruce Wade and Larnel Coleman were both now over 300 pounds.
3. He said there were now 72 scholarship players on the roster and 69 were available for practice. He didn't specify why the other three were not available. I believe at least one player was opting out due to the Corona virus as is his right per the NCAA. This is both good and bad news. Power Five teams would fall on their swords if they only had 69 scholarship players, but this is a big jump up from UMass' 2019 low fifties. The Minutemen will need at least one more scholarship class to be even with most of their FBS opponents (my words, not Bell's)
4. Bell said there were 16 commits so far for the 2021 recruiting class and he expected to take between 23 to 25 total recruits. He also stated he wanted to keep a couple scholarships open for the spring.
5. Bell said the QB situation was "much improved from last year", but did not give any hints about who would be starting.
6. He said now that the decision to play has been made, UMass would have some practices with full pads and hitting. Bell referenced the large number of serious injuries suffered by NFL players last weekend and said it was dangerous to play without getting the player's body ready for the contact.
7. Bell said the Minutemen started six true freshmen in 2019 and two of those were walk-ons. There is an old coaching maxim stating you lose one game for every true freshman you start. I don't think there is any saying for when your best guy at two positions is a freshman walk-on.
8. Bell said UMass was so thin last year he played on the scout team.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The UMass News and Media Relations page has the notice the Minutemen will play football in 2020.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Liberty Blog "A Sea of Red" notes that the date for the originally scheduled UMass Liberty game in November is still open. I watched the Liberty-Western Kentucky game and the Flames have another very good team this year.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
